Top 10 Books Chat

No, this isn't actually a blog post about my own personal Top 10 Books (I think I already did that once before, although I suppose I should update it). Since we've been locked down in the Great Isolation I've been setting up online opportunities for my friends and colleagues to keep engaged/entertained/connected. Obviously, the Discography conversation is an example, and we have another one coming up (or more than one, but more on that later). I've also been running Google Handout sessions with friends. My oldest friends, Jack and Dave, have been joining me for a Monday evening chat which we call Pink Master's Bar & Grill after the famous/infamous bar in Savannah. I've also been running a couple recurring online meetings with colleagues and friends at Champlain (who else will look after the Junior Faculty). Every two weeks we've been meeting in a group called So, What Are You Reading? which is pretty self-explanatory (although last week I was the only one who showed up so I may socially garrote that one. A more popular meeting has been a Top 10 Books discussion that we hold every Tuesday evening. One of my friends chooses ten books, which could their most favorite or the most meaningful or some other theme (my great friend Mike Kelly chose subversive books), and they walk us through them, and then we jump in with questions/comments, either by temporarily un-muting using the chat feature. We've had some great conversation, and I really should collect all the lists and send them around and publish them here.It's also so wonderful just to hang out with friends.

Here's the crew that showed up to hear Mike Lange's Top 10 Books, which was actually very moving. It also spun off into a discussion of Doc Savage books. It's difficult to say who brought the subject up, could be anyone, but they all stared at me like I (well, potentially anyone, really) was crazy, until Lionel blurted, "Oh my God, I think I read that!"